CultureNOW | A Celebration of Culture & Community

Simeon Bruner talks about the building of the Mass MoCA Museum by transforming the old mill buildings. Mass MoCA is the largest center for contemporary art in the United States. It opened to national acclaim in 1999. Twelve years of master planning and design went into the museum’s creation; its changing exhibits continue to attract over 125,000 visitors per year. A young museum, with no permanent collection and no endowment, commercial rental space is its de facto endowment. Reshaping an old industrial complex and former brownfield site, the museum is central to the economic revival of North Adams MA.

Hudson River Museum Amphitheater is constructed on a half acre site in Trevor Park in the City of Yonkers connected to the Westchester RiverWalk, a planned 51.5-mile richly programmed esplanade paralleling the Hudson River in Westchester. When completed, village centers, historic sites, parks and river access points will be connected by a network of trails, esplanades and boardwalks. Hudson River Museum Amphitheater is the focal RiverWalk project constructed for Yonkers.

Next to the Hudson River Museum originally constructed in 1967, and integrated into the existing slope, the Amphitheater provides stepped outdoor concrete seating for 465 people, an outdoor concrete stage with associated low energy LED and plasma stage lighting, audio visual equipment, and light towers. The context of the museum’s 1960s brutalist ribbed concrete design inspired the Amphitheater’s concrete material and form.

Hudson River Museum Amphitheater will provide a multipurpose resource for the diverse needs of its community. It has been designed to present programming of special events like African American Heritage Day, Walks for Cure, and Hispanic cultural events. Yonkers is home to a vibrant independent music scene, with many small musical groups performing zydeco, jazz, latin, salsa, and rock. The amphitheater will support Hudson River Museum's Film Programs; performance, recitals, puppetry, pageants, and one act plays; school events, picnics, and graduations; and astronomical viewing associated with the Museum’s Planetarium programming.

Aaron Dorf, Project Director of Snøhetta talks about the Museum and some of the design issues involved in creating it. Snøhetta was commissioned to design the only building that actually sits on the memorial grounds and is slated to contain cultural activities. The idea of placing a cultural building on the actual memorial site is rare and it has been expected to garner considerable scrutiny. During the four years of working with the project, the program has changed several times, however it has remained a cultural facility that is dedicated to visitor comfort and orientation. The design for the building embodies a careful reaction to the horizontal character of the memorial design while also providing the area with a lively organic form that allows the visitor to imagine the site and city in a broader sense.

David Marwell, the Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, talks about the completion of the museum's expansion, which was shortly after September 11, 2001. Located five blocks south of the 9/11 attacks, the museum was the closest cultural institution to the Trade Towers site, thus impact on the neighborhood was profound. The expansion opened on the second anniversary of 9/11.

Matilda McQuaid, Deputy Curatorial Collector of the Textiles Department, discusses the renovation of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. The impetus for the renovation was to create more exhibition space.

Donald Albrecht, Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of New York speaks about the Museum.

Signe Nielsen, New York based landscape architect, talks about the challenge of navigating the design of the historic preservation of the park and the West Village and Soho users to have a design that was edgier.

Carol Berens, Architect and VP of the Empire State Development Corporation, details the tumultuous, decades-long creation of Hudson River Park. 

Amy Stein Milford, Deputy Director of the Museum at Eldridge Street, discusses the Eldridge Street Synagogue.

Xocolatti is a tiny store in New York City's Soho district. Tom Shea and Farnaz Mansuri of De-Spec share the challenges behind its design.